Students ride past a memorial on Hayden Lawn on the Tempe Campus on Tuesday, Sept. 27, 2016. The memorial was set up to remember the 43 students who disappeared from Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers' College in Mexico in 2014.

This year a memorial was set up again but with a more personal touch. Instead of stones, the numbers are formed of paper bags emblazoned with a picture of one of the victims, along with their name. The Hayden Library skylight is covered in chalk drawings of a raised fist, a widely-used symbol of solidarity and support, a rose and the words "Nos Faltan."

Belen Sisa, a political science junior, said she was overcome with emotion when she walked past the memorial.

"It's beautiful to see that students here in Arizona, in the United States are bringing awareness to a terrible tragedy that the Mexican government tried to cover up," she said. "It shows that solidarity transcends borders and that as students ourselves stand with them."

Sisa posted a photo of the memorial on Facebook, and it received many shares and likes from members of the ASU community.

Sisa said she thinks it is important for American college students to be aware of the incident because it is something that could have happened to them. She said the 43 students executed in Mexico were taken because they protested the government for better education.

She stressed the importance of the idea that these were college students executed for protesting their rights, and it is something that could potentially happen to anyone.

"What if this happened to one of us while we were protesting for in-state tuition for DACA students here at ASU?" she said. "What if this happened to us when Governor Doug Ducey cut the education budget for the universities and we rose up at the state capital?"

Reach the reporter at aegeland@asu.edu or follow @alexisegeland on Twitter.